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Zynga confirms OMGPOP acquisition

Update: Zynga's call with the press just ended, and revealed a bit more information -- but not the price, as Zynga refused to discuss any financial information. David Ko mentioned that celebrities from Miley Cyrus to Rosie O'Donnell to Demi Lovato play Draw Something, but no word on Alec Baldwin. Ko also confirmed that there are no plans to change the name of Draw Something, whether to Draw With Friends or something else. "Effective immediately, OMGPOP will be part of the Zynga family, CEO Dan Porter is now the Vice President and General Manager of Zynga New York," said Ko.

Queried about the reasons behind the acquisition, both Ko and Porter noted the similarities between the two companies. "For us it's always been about games that share the vision...we look for folks that focus on social and essentially have a mission and a strategy that's somewhat similar to our own," said Ko. Porter noted that Zynga's technology and ability to scale the game was also an important consideration. Asked about the future of the game itself, Porter noted that they have a roadmap for the design that's focused on continuing to make it more social. A key feature to be added is a way for people to save their pictures, along with a chat function; other gameplay features are planned as well.

Original story:

Zynga only a couple days ago was strongly rumored to be buying social/mobile games developer OMGPOP for $200 million - today the company confirmed the acquisition of the Draw Something studio, but did not mention the price.

Zynga has been pushing hard to increase it mobile business, which is a huge growth opportunity for the social behemoth, and OMGPOP will be a key in that growth. The developer will "focus on building new mobile IP and strengthening its existing portfolio of fun and creative social games."

"The OMGPOP team has created a game that's fun, expressive and
engenders real social interaction," said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO
of Zynga. "Draw Something has captured the imagination of millions of
people around the world. We love the way they've worked playful and
relevant culture into their games from Devo to Daft Punk, from Lin to
Beckham. We're honored to have the opportunity to partner with and
support such an innovative team of creative inventors."

"I want to thank our players, our fans, everyone who's ever drawn
something. You've made this game into something truly special. Zynga
offered us a chance to focus on Draw Something -- they know the power
of the game and they planned with us how to let it keep rolling in the
same fun, irreverent, social way that it has been. That was really
important to us," said Dan Porter, CEO of OMGPOP.

"The game will stay true to you and what you love, and it's my solemn vow that the magic of
Draw Something will not change. I know without a doubt that Zynga is
the right partner for OMGPOP. Our new partners at Zynga know how to
innovate at scale, and they're pushing the limits of social with their
mobile games. With the added resources we now have, and the deep gaming
experience we can draw from, we can't wait to continue to surprise our
users. If you're a fan, a player of ours, I can't wait to show you
what's in store -- it's going to be drawsome."

Draw Something recently shot past Zynga's Words With Friends in terms of daily active users, but Zynga can now breathe easy with OMGPOP joining the family. As part of the acquisition today Zynga revealed these statistics on Draw Something:

In the last week, more than 1 billion drawings have been created

Draw Something had three drawings per second the day the game launched

Yesterday, Draw Something has over 3,000 drawings per second at its peak

Draw Something is the #1 word game in 84 countries according to the Apple App Store

The most popular words in Draw Something are: Starfish, pregnant, hangman, six pack, boom box

"At Zynga we're committed to building brands that we're proud of and that our players absolutely love," added David Ko, Chief Mobile Officer of Zynga. "We want people to play our games and feel a fun and valuable social connection to their friends and family. We think Draw Something is one of the most social, most expressive mobile games ever built with its unique social competition and unmatched player generated content. We're excited about the brands OMGPOP has developed to date and we look forward to supporting the team's creativity and helping scale their incredible games to an even bigger global audience."

Am I the only one who thinks the buyout prices are a bit on the high side for those developers? No disrespect to the people at OMGPOP sure they do a great job, but for that price you can open a full studio to work on bigger stuff and still have money to spare all just to be first again in the facebook charts. How much is the profit per year that OMGPOP makes? How did that "cant beat em buy em" tactic turn out in the end in the 90's and 00's for console game devs again?

Draw Something right now is clearing $250,000 per day, after Apple takes out 30%. If they could do that for a year, that would be over $91 million in profits. Of course, there are many factors involved, but just given what the game is doing right now the investment is not completely out of scale.

Well that would be 91 million in income pre tax and pre expenses such as salaries and all other stuff right?

I'm always raising an eyebrow when I see such prices for relatively new companies without a proven track record. Draw is from 2008 and only became big and know after it came to facebook. The social gaming market has a lot of one hit wonders with the strong customer shift from game to game. Rovio made plenty of stuff but all they are known for is Angry Bird.

How is DrawSomething making money? I'm pretty sure its the game my brother in-law has been playing (draw something, send to someone, they guess a word based on the pic) - but he definitely hasn't been spending money on it.

Sure if its a couple of $ to purchase, but sales will decline and free clones/versions will come out...

Michael - In-app advertising and micro-payments, I think. It's a free app and you don't have to spend money on it, but you can buy game currency to do stuff like getting more "bombs" to give you a new choice of words if you don't like the three choices they give you. As some of the words they give you are quite obscure and/or hard to draw, I can see that being quite a money spinner.

It's certainly been very successful amongst my friends - I downloaded it after seeing my wife playing it, and within a few hours eight other friends started games with me. At the end of the day though, it is pretty much just Pictionary.